Amnesty Has ‘Irrefutable’ Evidence of an Ethnic Cleansing Campaign Against the Rohingya

Amnesty International says it has conclusive proof Myanmar is operating a coordinated and systematic campaign to drive out its Rohingya population, a 1.1 million strong Muslim minority that has suffered decades of persecution in the Buddhist country. Analysis of active fire-detection data, satellite imagery, photographs and videos from the ground — as well as interviews with dozens of eye witnesses — reveals that security forces set more than 80 separate fires in the country’s troubled Rakhine State since fighting broke out on Aug. 25, according to an Amnesty press statement. More than 370,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh in less than three weeks, bringing with them stories of murder, rape, and burning villages at the hands of security forces. On September 7, about a dozen journalists on a government-controlled trip through Rakhine saw new fires burning in a village that had been abandoned by Rohingya. Read more: ‘The Villages are Burning Down.’ Fear and Fire Send Rohingya Fleeing to Bangladesh “The evidence is irrefutable – the Myanmar security forces are setting northern Rakhine State ablaze in a targeted campaign to push the Rohingya people out of Myanmar,” Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan said in the press statement. “Make no mistake: this is ethnic cleansing.” Eyewitnesses interviewed by Amnesty consistently reported seeing soldiers, police, and vigilante groups systema...
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